media post #4

2. This comic was drawn by Chris Muir. He is trying to show how Hillary Clinton is trying to appeal to African Americans in her campaign. It depicts her in blackface and her speech is meant to be in an African American slave dialect. Her comment “I’s seen da promised land” is making fun of the slaves in the south calling the north the Promised Land. Muir definitely gets his point across here, but I think he make have taken the comic a little too far. The blackface is not needed and the dialect are clearly referring back to the time period when the relationships between the blacks and whites were horrible and the blacks were still fighting for true freedom. The reason that I chose this comic is because I was very intrigued by the blackface. I had never known that black characters were played by white actors before watching "Ethnic Notions" Then after watching the film, it really occurred to me how terrible the represetations of African Americans were in early movie productions.

3. This item relates to class material because we just watched a movie, Ethnic Notions," in which the blackface was a focal point of the show. The idea of having white actors play black characters and going way too far with the black color was just terrible. Even worse was when producers made black actors use blackface instead of the natural color of their skin. Before watching that film, I had never knew or noticed before that white actors played black people in older movies. The blackface used in the older movies was extremely skewed and was so much darker than the actual color of most of the African Americans skin color. Another thing I noticed with the blackface is that they also color the lips a much brighter color in order to make the blackface seem pitch black. It also gave them more of a chubby lips look. We also learned in the movie that the blacks were portrayed as brutes with their faces looking like monkeys or other animals. I think this cartoon accurately displays how the blackface actually looked. They were never really made to look like humans and I think this cartoon accurately depicts that. Another thing from the movie was the always happy, cheery Sambo. This cartoon also displays Hillary as a dumb, cheerful, Sambo; not as an intelligent serious candidate running for president.

4. But the fact is that in the cartoon, Clinton actually looks like an authentic blackface actor. But just because the blackface does look realistic, it doesn’t make it ethical for Muir to display this in a cartoon. His cartoon is meant to make fun of Hillary Clinton. I don’t think he realized that this cartoon was making fun of an extremely rough time period in African American history. I’m sure that this offended numerous people of African American descent. Many cartoonists frequently take shots at people running for political office, which is ok. But to do it in this fashion was despicable and exceedingly unethical. Many people who commented on this comic stated that they thought that this was not unethical and was funny. I don’t see how people can have this opinion. Hillary is clearly portrayed to be a stupid black-faced Sambo, who doesn’t know how to talk. I think that those pictures of the blackfaced Sambos were overused in the past. To use them in this present time period is not a thing for Muir to be proud of.